Grinding wheel

This may seem like a odd idea but I think it would be a different solution to magic potions, stackable food and creating sand which everyone has been talking about. to the game
You can make 2 kinds of grinder
A Coal powered grinder
Brick=material
Iron=air
[iron] [iron]
[iron]
And a wind powered grinder which would need to be built at a higher altitude in order to get enough power

You can use the grinder to grind various materials. You can create a healing paste by grinding brown mushrooms, healing paste is stackable but only heals half a heart. Its to heal outside combat and is space efficient
Grinding red mushrooms creates a weak poison you can apply to weapons for 1 use
Grinding Red flowers creates a powder that can be used as a very weak explosive and start fires
Grinding Yellow flowers creates a powder that gives a temporary boost above your normal max health for 60 seconds
Grinding Blue flowers (if they are added) creates a stackable paste that can allow you to breathe underwater for a few extra seconds
Grinding a shrub creates a antidote to poison (But it only has a 50% chance of working so multiple doses may be needed)
Grinding gold ingots creates Gold leaf which can be used to decorate armor and weapons
Grinding Stone creates gravel and eventually sand
Grinding pork creates processed meat, healing 2 hearts but can be stacked into a stack of 8
Grinding gunpowder causes an explosion
Grinding TNT causes an explosion
Grinding coal causes a fire
Grinding flint or flint and steel causes a fire
Grinding glass turns it back into sand

I've actually been thinking of grinding stones since the tools and weapons came out, but I only thought they'd have three uses:

The rock grinding seems useful and could help for areas where sand is rare or nonexistant.
Grinding non-wooden tools and weapons could add a bit more to their durability meter, but only useable per item once or twice.
Grinding flowers and mushrooms shouldn't give potions, but dyes to combine with cloth to get colored cloth.

The only other thing from your list that I think would be good would be meat grinding. It should only be applicable to raw meat (Making ground meat), and then have to be cooked to be edible, but I'm doubting the sanity of grinding meat on a grinding wheel.

Another thing to think about would be foot-powered grinding wheels, where right-clicking them fast enough in succession causes them to go off, or something like that.

I don't see why we have to limit ourselves to assuming a grinding wheel would have to be powered to begin with; if it's like your standard middle-age foot-pedal grinder, you can assume your character is pumping it as long as it's "in use," a.k.a. being right clicked. That would make it much easier to implement and easier for players to use it, as it would essentially be another version of the crafting table, except with only one square for input.

While I would prefer the creation of sand to be handled by erosion (thereby taking advantage of the standard block-to-block interactions Notch already wants to put in the game) I'd be all for using this for turning plants into dyes or other products. Realistically, Notch will have to come up with some way to add colors to cloth blocks anyhow.

First, you need to thresh it to seeds, grind it up, and THEN you only have flour. From there, dough, heat and THEN bread.

I can see the flour+water=dough shortcut bypassing all the other ingredients and steps in the process. But buying an initial bag of seeds and making a windmill/water wheel near a farm to grind wheat into flour would get realism points. (I think the eggs/butter/yeast/etc etc etc ingredients/steps are more annoying than they are worth in realism though.)

Hmm... that sounds reasonable: set up a grinding wheel, use it like a crafting table to turn wheat into flower, craft the flour with water (when or if we ever get buckets) to make dough, and then place the dough on the furnace to produce bread. Lengthens the process of creating bread quite a bit and makes it much more involved, but it has two major benefits;

-Making bread actually makes sense, and gives someone who wants to play as a "farmer" character something more interesting to do than attack dirt with a hoe
-"Seed" drops would no longer need to replant, since it would make more sense to just plant surplus grain

Though... I suppose the second one could happen regardless of extending the bread-making process.

Yes bread making using the grinding wheel is also great!
Also the idea on the foot pedal, the faster you click on the foot pedal the quicker it grinds and the more high quality the finished product is.

I mean that the gramaphone and the millstone constructs would likely require several distinct blocks. In this case, the rotary mechanism from the record player would support and rotate the millstone instead of a record.

like this...

But with the handle on the side (or not existing at all since it would be rather boring to wait there cranking) and a relatively small grindstone (this isn't industrial scale production) positioned horizontally on the top. The flour would be retrieved from the bottom drawer.

This would also work well with my suggestion on how gears could move power fairly. With a few power sources (Not going to get into detail, IM NEVER GOING TO GET INTO DETAIL) it could work like a forge. viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12523

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Quote from dorsidwarf »

whut would you actually se them for? other than other implausibkle suggestions?

I mean that the gramaphone and the millstone constructs would likely require several distinct blocks. In this case, the rotary mechanism from the record player would support and rotate the millstone instead of a record.

like this...

But with the handle on the side (or not existing at all since it would be rather boring to wait there cranking) and a relatively small grindstone (this isn't industrial scale production) positioned horizontally on the top. The flour would be retrieved from the bottom drawer.

That would be too complex, I think just a furnace styled interface with a button for grinding (Which you need to mash) will be best.

I mean that the gramaphone and the millstone constructs would likely require several distinct blocks. In this case, the rotary mechanism from the record player would support and rotate the millstone instead of a record.

like this...

But with the handle on the side (or not existing at all since it would be rather boring to wait there cranking) and a relatively small grindstone (this isn't industrial scale production) positioned horizontally on the top. The flour would be retrieved from the bottom drawer.

That would be too complex, I think just a furnace styled interface with a button for grinding (Which you need to mash) will be best.

I wasn't talking about the interface, simply what the unit would look like.

The whole system looks nice, but I gotta say, those crafting recipies make no sense at all. No matter how I look at it.
I also don't think it's reasonable to have a complex machine with several parts, like a Grinder, be crafted on a 9/9 grid in one go. I'd think tihs would work better as a higher-tier item, making use of several multi-purpose Components rather than be a.. diagonal goldfish cracker made of stone, or something.